In mango plantations, mangoes are conventionally picked by a person armed with a long stick with a knife on its end who reaches up and cuts each mango from the tree. To alleviate the need for another person to catch the mango, the picker works from a trampoline on which the mango lands. The mango bounces from the trampoline into a water tank. In the water tank any sap on the mango is washed off before it can mark the skin of the mango.
While a mango which lands squarely on the trampoline will clearly suffer less bruising than a mango dropped onto the ground there is still some degree of bruising of the fruit. Furthermore, it is not always easy to direct where the mango falls with enough precision to ensure it lands on the trampoline and some mangoes may fall a long distance into the quite shallow water tank and land heavily on its bottom or even land on the ground adjacent the trampoline. It is also likely that not all of the mangoes which land on the trampoline will bounce directly into the water tank; some may bounce onto the ground and others may come to rest on the trampoline. In the former case substantial bruising will occur and in the latter case (unless the picker stops picking and bends over to pick up the mango and throw it into the water tank) the mango will suffer sap burns which reduce its value. The present invention provides a technique of picking fruit such as mangoes which minimises damage to the fruit.